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E

Evan LaPointe

Founder

CORE Sciences

🚀 Career & Leadership (2)⚡ Execution (1)👥 Team & Culture (1)

Key Takeaways

  • 1.Ask yourself 'Am I a miserable experience?' before worrying about your competence; biological appeal outweighs ability in relationships.
  • 2.Stop skipping the 'Priming' phase in meetings; jumping straight to decision-making without aligning on principles causes the majority of meeting waste.
  • 3.If you are high in Conscientiousness but low in Openness, abstract vision work will feel like a 'pain cave'; use 'Reverse Engineering' of outcomes to bridge this gap.
  • 4.Influence has three speeds: Slow (letting them fail), Moderate (teaching/Challenger Sale), and Fast (inducing Cognitive Dissonance).
  • 5.True delegation (Trust Level 3) isn't hoping someone does it as well as you; it's recognizing their mind works in a way that is superior to yours for that specific task.
  • 6.Vulnerability about your personality traits (e.g., 'I struggle with abstract concepts') is more effective than masking it or being unapologetically difficult.
  • 7.Use 'Situational Awareness' (n > 5 customer conversations) to validate whether a strategic idea is actually 'inconceivable' or just outside your personal experience.

Methodologies(4)

🚀 Career & Leadership

A framework for deconstructing professional relationships into three components. Contrary to business logic, 'Ability' is the least important biologically, while 'Appeal' (the experience of working with you) is the most critical for survival in a social mesh.

Core Principles

  • 1.Component 1: Ability (Utility) - Can you do the job? This includes knowledge, reasoning, and imagination. It is necessary but insufficient.
  • 2.Component 2: Trust (Risk) - Evaluated on three levels: 1. Delegation (Simple tasks), 2. Scalability (Doing it as well as I would), 3. Superiority (Doing it better/differently than I could).
  • 3.Component 3: Appeal (Experience) - The biological priority. If you trigger a colleague's safety system (fear/threat) or are a 'miserable experience,' your utility is nullified because the network isolates you.
  • +1 more...

"It's critical to ask what kind of experience am I? Not how good am I at my job... but am I a miserable experience? If the answer is yes, don't worry too much about the other pieces yet. You got to fix that first."

#'experience#first'#relationship
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⚡ Execution

Treats meetings like a product with distinct phases. It mandates a 'Priming' phase before any decision-making occurs to align on the 'meta' of the conversation—principles, mindsets, and context.

Core Principles

  • 1.Step 1: Define the Category - Is this meeting for generating options, creative problem solving, or efficiency seeking?
  • 2.Step 2: Establish Principles - Explicitly state the rules of engagement (e.g., 'Are we honoring sacred cows or eating them today?' or 'Is speed more important than accuracy?').
  • 3.Step 3: Check Alignment - Ensure everyone has the same information context before debate begins.
  • +2 more...

"A lot of meetings skip the priming step altogether... It would be safe to skip the priming step if we began the meeting under the assumption that everybody here is on the same page... I think that's a ludicrous assumption."

#meeting#priming#protocol
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👥 Team & Culture

A method for navigating the tension between the 'Openness' trait (comfort with abstraction/vision) and the 'Conscientiousness' trait (desire for efficiency/order). It frames this not as a conflict of ideas, but a conflict of neural processing.

Core Principles

  • 1.Self-Diagnosis: Identify if you are Low Openness/High Conscientiousness. If so, abstract vision work will trigger your 'Pain Cave' and feel inefficient.
  • 2.Vulnerability: Explicitly state your bias. 'I am low in openness, so this feels inconceivable to me. I need help translating this.'
  • 3.Translation: Use 'Reverse Engineering' as a bridge. If a vision feels fluffy, ask to reverse engineer the inputs required to achieve that outcome. This satisfies the conscientious brain's need for structure.
  • +1 more...

"If you are low in openness... as soon as things get abstract, not only are you like, 'I don't like this,' you have a much more visceral negative response... you are now going into your pain cave."

#identity#alignment#team
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🚀 Career & Leadership

Gamifies influence by asking you to intentionally select a 'Character' and a 'Speed' for your influence campaign, rather than relying on default behaviors.

Core Principles

  • 1.Step 1: Choose Your Character - Are you the 'Compassionate Helper', the 'Logic/Data Provider', or the 'Sledgehammer/Disruptor'?
  • 2.Step 2: Buy Permission - Explicitly ask for permission to play that role (e.g., 'I'm going to play devil's advocate and try to break this idea, is that okay?').
  • 3.Step 3: Choose Your Speed - select based on urgency:
  • +3 more...

"It's almost like you're playing Elden Ring... The starting point is to choose your character. 'Hey, I'm the devil's advocate approach' or 'I'm the break it and see if it still stands'... your personality kind of has a natural fit."

#'select#character'#influence
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